1. What indications do we have early in this chapter of Dickens's
authoritative, domineering, demanding nature?

2. Why did Dickens in the 1854 novel Hard Times connect a want of "Fancy" with
"the horrors experienced by the urban poor" (p. 689)?

Notes

The Combination Acts of 1799-1800 had outlawed both trade unions and
strikes, which were punishable by summary imprisonment. A flurry of strike
activity greeted the repeal of these acts in 1824. Legislation enacted in
1824-5 permitted workers to organize, but prohibited breach of contract and
"molestation" or "obstruction" of employers. The sentencing of the six
Tolpuddle (Dorsetshire) Martyrs to seven years' transportation to Australia
for organizing the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers (1834) shows
the suspicion with which such organizations were regarded when Dickens began
his career as a writer. That same year Matthew Arnold called the Trades'
Unions "a fearful engine of mischief, ready to riot or to assassinate." The
first listing in the Oxford English Dictionary for "striker" (a
workman who is 'on strike') is 7 Dec. 1850.

3. Explain how Dickens could admire "the labouring poor" (690) and be "by
no means unsympathetic to the workers' case," yet be utterly opposed to
industrial strikes.

5. Why was Dickens upset with the Illustrated London News's
reporting "that the novel was based upon the Preston action" (see page 693
in Ackroyd)?

6. How, contends Peter Ackroyd, do Dickens's novels, in their heroes and
their structures, reflect the character of their author (see p. 695-6 in
Ackroyd)?

7. Although "fabular" and "closer to the tone of his Christmas stories"
(696), how is Hard Times also immensely "topical" (697)?

8. Why did Dickens choose to make the tawdry performers of Sleary's
travelling circus the champions of Fancy? (See page 698 in Ackroyd.)

Note:

In the matter of divorce, how does Stephen Blackpool's situation mirror
Dickens's own in the 1850s? Remember that, until 1857, each civil divorce
action in the United Kingdom was, in fact, a separate act of Parliament, and
therefore prohibitively expensive for the working and middle classes. The
only grounds were adultery and desertion, and neither party could re-marry
afterward. From 1800 to 1857 only ten such bills passed annually, and only
three divorces over these six decades were awarded to female petitioners. An
"a vinculo" (Latin: "from chains") annulment could be obtained on the
grounds of age, incompetence, impotence, or fraud.